It's a wintery Thursday night in Cleveland, Ohio — cold enough that I can see my breath, but not so cold that my nosehairs have stiffened and merged into one. We're huddled inside a crowded Superelectric Pinball Parlor in Gordon Square. The walls are plastered with local sports pennants and kitschy knickknacks, and someone's blowing a bugle into a microphone. I'm with the five members of Suitor, one of the city's best and most exciting bands since their formation in 2020. Guitarist Chris Corsi suggests that the horn signals the start of a warmup round for the serious pinballers in the house.
It's mildly amusing that we've ended up at a pinball bar, given that, for the almost six years I've known this band, I've always thought their guitar lines were pinball-esque — spring-loaded with a jerky post-punk staccato. Throw on nearly any song from their 2021 debut EP Communion, and you'll feel like you're in the famous tennis ball scene from Challengers, sensually and disorientingly being yeeted back and forth across the court.
Down the street is Happy Dog, a beloved hot dog joint and musician-run venue that's ground zero for the city's best guitar bands. Suitor played their first show there in August 2021, and I still remember being floored by their hypnotic sharpness and Emma Shepard's dreamy coos. Suitor are returning to the Dog on March 21 to perform and celebrate the release of their first LP, Saw You Out With The Weeds, which comes out the day before on Cincinnati punk label Feel It Records. Following last month's lead single "Factory," the album's pretty yet punishing closer "Dull Customer" is out today.
Suitor are Northeast Ohio heads through and through. Shepard grew up in Akron and Hudson and met her bandmates when they were attending college in Kent. Her mother and uncle played in Akron new wave bands (Unit 5 and the Bizarros, respectively), and her father owns Akron's Time Traveler Records, a local staple for more than 45 years that's still chugging along despite some health scares. Shepard met Corsi while working at a coffee shop in Kent, where they'd gab about early aughts indie rock bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Chris Corsi, his brother and bassist John Corsi, and guitarist Stephen Ovak all went to Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School, where they'd run into each other at football games and yap about hair metal. Drummer Ryan Matricardi hails from Lakewood, and Shepard distinctly recalls their first meeting in Kent when Matricardi swapped her PBR for a Lady Bligh and Coke and simply quipped, "Turn up!"
With roots that deep, it's no surprise that they have deeply held — and often funny — opinions about the goings-on around town, from punk scene politics and college radio tumult to the Cleveland Cavaliers' new bushy-bearded superstar guard. One recent nugget of Cleveland punk lore that reached locals and outsiders alike was the viral hardcore shows at a Taco Bell parking lot on West 117th Street. Though it's not their scene, according to Suitor, what initially seemed like an organic bit of fun has since turned into a cursed affair, with a roughly $30 ticket price and an insultingly meager discount for low-income showgoers. "I love neoliberalism in the punk scene," Chris jokes. "Is anybody scalping their West 117th Taco Bell hardcore fest tickets for, like, 300% profit?" Shepard asks.
In other news, and of far greater significance to Suitor, Ideastream Public Media, the NPR affiliate for Northeast Ohio, launched a shocking, sudden takeover of WCSB, Cleveland State University's student-operated radio station and an important cultural linchpin for nearly 50 years, converting it into a professionally run jazz station. "The fact that Cleveland is a mid-sized city and had two really incredible radio stations with WCSB and WRUW was always a point of pride — that you could be in Cleveland city limits and hear weird post-punk, no-wave, and other weirdo shit on the radio," Ovak says. "I would rather give a guy from Ideastream his coffee every morning than have my own radio show. That sounds like a much better opportunity," Shepard says with a laugh.
As for the Cavs' acquisition of James Harden, Suitor are stoked about his on-court skills — and off-court hobbies. "He's going to bring strippers from around the globe to the Cleveland area," Matricardi says. "Does James Harden have a stripper problem?" Ovak asks. "No, he has a stripper solution," Matricardi retorts.
It's obvious from their banter that these five are a tight-knit group, and their shared creative history goes beyond Suitor, having played in various configurations over the years, most notably in a trippy indie band, Small Wood House, who were active until 2020 and fizzled out shortly after. In the thick of lockdown delirium, Chris Corsi and Shepard decided to work on new material together, so they wrote some songs, grabbed a computer, aimed a microphone at a practice amp, and recorded what became Communion.
"I had really bad stage fright for a while, and Communion was my way of still pursuing music without having to be on stage anymore," Shepard explains. "Then, when we started getting show offers and realized people liked the music, we were like, ‘Well, this could actually be something bigger.' The first couple shows we played, I was scared to death, but it just started to become comfortable and I started to really face that fear."
Playing Communion live didn't just require an overcoming of performance anxiety, they also had to expand from a two-piece to a five-piece to do the songs justice. Once they recruited Ovak, Matricardi, and John Corsi, the clean, spiky sounds of their EP grew punchier and noisier, cementing Suitor as a must-see act and establishing the DNA of what became their debut album. By the time Kansas post-punk duo Sweeping Promises (Feel It Records, Sub Pop) rolled into town for a show in 2023, the opening act choices were a no-brainer. Suitor were tapped to open the gig, along with local punk supergroup Disintegration, and they impressed Sweeping Promises' Caufield Schnug to the point that he offered to record the band in his Lawrence, Kansas home studio.
Though Suitor assumed it was just a polite gesture, they kept in touch and Schnug made good on his offer to track their album. Without much experience playing out of town, their drive to Lawrence in spring 2024 marked their first out-of-state road trip as a band. With a U-Haul weighing down their car, and Matricardi's frequent stops to answer nature's call, they estimate that it took a few hours longer than the planned 12-and-a-half-hour drive. But they finally arrived, and with the help of a grant from the Panza Foundation, they were ready to spend four days recording with Schnug and his Sweeping Promises bandmate Lira Mondal, who contributed vocals and synth — and baked goods.
"Every day, we'd roll up and Caufield was outside and really animated, talking on the phone," Chris recalls. "Then, we'd start recording around 10, and it would go all day. It was really fun. I've never tracked a record like that — doing it all live and back to back. So, by the end of it, I remember we were exhausted — musically exhausted, at least. It was this big, sunny, open room, and I just remember getting really sweaty in there. But the room never lost its charm because it just sounded so good."
While they reveled in the opportunity to work with one of their influences and laud the "intuitive" and "excitable" environment Schnug creates as a producer, they knew they only had two days to record the music and two days for vocals, so the pressure was on. But the bandmates agree that the quick pace also prevented them from overthinking things or sweating mistakes. "Meat Puppets had a rule that they only recorded a song like two or three times because if they messed up, that's obviously how they play it," Shepard says. "I feel like that was kind of the approach with this album."
Unlike Communion, they already had the liberty of testing out album cuts at shows over the years, and their full-band, live recording setup resulted in an energetic, raw sound that embraced the bleed of the room. So, while it may be comparing apples to oranges, Saw You Out With The Weeds is definitely gnarlier than its predecessor. Matricardi's cymbals crackle and itch, and Shepard's gauzy vocals bob above and below the mix with spooky mystique. Their dual guitars zigzag with delightfully fractured tones and thrash with newfound bluster. Meanwhile, John's tactile, low-toned bass throbs and slinks, grounding the whole affair. Their driving, distorted eeriness recalls the Chameleons and more recently, Robber Robber. Their guitars have an Omni-like twistiness. And Shepard's dynamic vocals allow them to shapeshift from floaty drone pop and talky punk to wailing, melancholic post-punk and noise-rock.
"We had a playlist of inspo, and when I look at the things that were added at that time, there were bands with super clean production, like Interpol, who I've always loved, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs and those early-to-mid 2000s New York indie bands, but also Swell Maps and dirtier, punkier-sounding bands," Shepard says. "We wanted it to sound big," Chris adds. "When I was mixing it, if there was a number one priority, it was ‘big.' I tend to like records that are maybe a little muddier, but you really get to feel the boominess of the drum kit and bass."
As night falls on the pinball bar, it appears a full-on tournament is now underway. The casual players are migrating from the glowing machines, feeling the regulars' eager breath down their necks, and the band has wrapped up their Tetris and Mega Man runs. Shepard laments that the Tetris machine doesn't have her preferred controls, but lights up when explaining the joys of the "T-spin" move. Likewise, Ovak is somewhat disappointed with the limits of Mega Man free play, but enthuses about the Where's Waldo? NES game he played growing up. Relatedly, the concept of a Where's Waldo? live action movie is floated, and the band decides that Adam Friedland should be cast as Waldo. Matricardi bests Chris at pinball by roughly 10 million points—though totally unclear whether that's a normal margin of victory. Chris clarifies that he's merely average, but he has an app that tracks his scores, and his dozen-or-so milestone badges would suggest otherwise. Shepard concludes our outing with a final game of Ms. Pac-Man, we say our goodbyes, and I depart into the brisk darkness of West 65th Street—with the familiar urban symphony of a middle-aged man revving his motorcycle at a stoplight.
***
A few days before pinball night, I meet the band at Shepard and Ovak's new house in West Park, just a short walk from the city's finest punk dive, the Little Rose Tavern. The weather is stuck in the hellish limbo between rain and snow, so just before entering their home, I step in a puddle that submerges my entire sneaker and the bottom of my pant leg in melted snow. Their living room wall is emblazoned with Raincoats album artwork, their shelf stacked with VHS tapes. Their orange cat, Clarence, is calm and sweet, but always on the move — at one point, he jumps on the back of the couch behind my head, and I'm not sure I play it cool.
Eventually, our conversation turns to Shepard's lyrics. While she's historically leaned on abstract voyeurism, this new album finds her peeling back the layers and drawing more from her personal experiences. Saw You Out With The Weeds teems with tales of gritty world-weariness, financial strife, and nighttime debauchery, and like all the best noir, it's rooted in real-life ache. Recurring motifs include religion, fire, and returning home, so for all its bleak references to guns, shampoo commercials, and cash loans, there's a subtle theme of rebirth, however painful, that lurks beneath the surface.
"Maybe this sounds corny, but sometimes, when I'm in a creative rut, I need to feel something really strongly," Shepard says. "I drove to my childhood home, which was kind of falling apart at the time, and now, it's been bought by a developer and redone. Just sitting by my childhood house and having this flood of memories and feelings really helped me with a lot of the lyrics. My family's very agnostic, but there was a period where my sister became really attracted to Catholicism when she was young — in middle and high school — and that was something that drove a wedge between us, and now, that's not her experience anymore. I feel like that comes up a lot, feeling like, ‘Wow, I'm not gonna be able to talk to my sister anymore.' So, it's about religion, economic struggle, and the crowd of people that I hung out with when I was younger."
Their propulsive, murky lead single, "Factory," is Suitor's most literal song yet, with Shepard repeatedly murmuring "Went out with some friends of mine/ We go down by the river, walk by the factory light/ Do you?" "I feel like it's about these weird, dueling parts of my life," Shepard says of the song. "The actual imagery of the factory and the river comes from living in Kent across the street from an old factory, and the nights my friends and I would go to the bars downtown and stay up all night — just those classic early 20s memories. But I juxtapose that with my first relationship, which was with a guy who was a lot older than me when I was a teenager, and images of slurring speech, the bruise around his eye, and fights. The first chapter of my life in Kent was with this person who was quite dangerous, so I was reflecting on that same backdrop later, having a group of friends that felt more safe and familial, and on the time in between. I was exploring the dread I felt when I was coming of age and trying to assert myself. Like, ‘Oh, I'm a grown-up' when I really wasn't, and I was having these experiences that were beyond my maturity level."
Just as Shepard wears her Kent experiences on her sleeve, the band reps their Cleveland hometown in the "Factory" video. Directed by Choir Boy's Adam Klopp, the clip finds Suitor wearing grotesque masks and a wedding dress in settings including an RTA train, the shores of Lake Erie, and the aisles of Ohio grocery chain Marc's. "The RTA was really funny because there were only a couple people on the train, and when we stopped, the RTA driver asked to get a picture with us," Shepard says. "Another funny thing that happened was when Chris was in the dog mask and he got on all fours and was crawling down the aisles of the train. After he did that, Adam was like, ‘Oh, I wasn't recording,' so we had to do that a couple times."
"Also, there are some shots of us down on the lake, and we filmed the video in February, so I think the ‘feels like' was negative 20," Ovak recounts. "We were just suffering, and Emma was crying." "I wasn't crying, he loves saying that," Shepard insists. "I was in my mother's wedding dress with no coat, and it was really cold." But perhaps their most absurd run-in occurred at their local Marc's, which appears to be living up to the chain's self-described unpretentiousness. "People at Marc's did not give a fuck," Shepard says, laughing. "The manager on duty literally walked by us and just said, ‘Hi.'"
For Clevelanders, Saw You Out With The Weeds is the culmination of years of jolting performances, and after countless euphoric nights and beers guzzled, I wouldn't fault any rando for feeling like a part of the record, despite not playing a single note. For newcomers, this album should be nothing short of an explosive introduction to Suitor's thrumming, dizzying soundworld. And for Suitor, the LP is, first and foremost, a manifestation of five friends who've rocked out for over a decade, from high school jam sessions and solo bouts of "quirked-up Regina Spektor worship" to shows with some of the best bands in America and beyond. They've made a full-length album that bares the wide scope of their experiences, emotions, and talents.
"It's this great back-and-forth situation where having this mutual creative goal makes our friendship stronger, but then having this great backbone of trust and friendship makes our music stronger," Shepard says. "This is the experience I've always wanted to have as a person who's very extroverted and friend-oriented and also thrives off of creative energy." Ovak adds, "Being in a band with your favorite people in the world that you've grown up with and being proud of the work that they're doing and you're doing feels really cool, like, ‘That's us doing the thing!'"
"Time makes you feel as if wanting's enough," Shepard intones in the album's final line, on "Dull Customer." After the years-long wait for this album, if Saw You Out With The Weeds proves anything, it's that desire isn't enough — chasing the real deal is worth it. But unless you're clocking hours at the pinball bar, maybe leave the pinball dream to the people blowing bugles in public on a weeknight.
Saw You Out With The Weeds is out 3/20 via Feel It Records. Pre-order it here.
